Media Release
May 12th, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Freesound Project: A web community for free and open exchange of sounds.

Barcelona, May 12th, 2005. The Freesound Project, an internet community supporting free exchange of sounds by musicians, sound artists and researchers, has been launched by the Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University. A web site located at http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ allows anyone to participate by contributing and downloading sounds.

The Freesound Project web site offers a variety of community oriented features including the ability for visitors to add descriptions and "tag words" to any sound. Advanced searching capabilities leverage cutting-edge research at the Music Technology Group. Sounds can be browsed according to their similarity and according to semantic relationships embedded in their descriptions.

In stark contrast to the music industry's increasing focus on controlling intellectual property, the web site aims to support an ongoing process of open and legal sound exchange. Sounds contributed by community members are publically available under the Creative Commons "Sampling+" License – a license allowing most uses of the sounds provided that the source is acknowleged.

Music Technology Group director Dr. Xavier Serra, a leading sound analysis researcher for the past two decades said, "A key project goal is to enable research which studies relationships among large collections of sounds. Often such collections must be acquired at significant expense. We aim to lower the cost of entry into this exciting field, and to enable research which has not been possible to date."

The project was created in the context of the 2005 International Computer Music Conference. This year's conference theme "Free sound" aims to raise awareness of the erosion of musical freedom by intellectual property laws, and to promote the idea of sound as a public good. The conference will be held in Barcelona at the beginning of September.

Sounds contributed so far include field recordings, domestic sound effects, recordings of musical instruments and electronic processed sounds. "The variety of sounds already contributed is truly amazing," said project creator Bram de Jong, "for example we have beautiful high-fidelity recordings of tuned wineglasses, synthesised and real birds, street noises, and close-up micro-sound recordings."

Since the commencement of public testing in early March this year, the project has attracted over 2,300 community members with over 1,650 sound contributions totalling more than 300 minutes of sound. With over 45,000 sound downloads in the last month the project is already proving popular with internet sound enthusiasts.

For further information about the Freesound Project contact Bram de Jong on +34 935 422 865 or by email freesound.

Web Links:

The Freesound Project: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu
2005 International Computer Music Conference: http://www.icmc2005.org
Music Technology Group, UPF: http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg
Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/

About the Music Technology Group

The Music Technology Group, MTG, a group of the Audiovisual Institute, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, specializes in audio processing technologies and their music and multimedia applications. With more than 40 researchers covering a range of disciplines, the MTG carries out research and development projects in areas such as audio processing and synthesis; audio identification; audio content analysis, description and transformation; singing voice processing; interactive systems; and software tools. The MTG was created in 1994 by its current director, Dr. Xavier Serra, as one of the research groups of the Audiovisual Institute, a centre for interdisciplinary research in Digital Media.

Contact:

Bram de Jong
Project Manager
Music Technology Group
Institut Universitari de L'Audiovisual (IUA)
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
C/ Ocata, 1
08003 Barcelona
Phone: (34) 935 422 865
Fax: (34) 935 422 202
Email: freesound